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Category: Microsoft Research

Microsoft’s Office Labs group today released a prototype plug-in for Outlook 2007 that automatically judges the importance of incoming e-mail messages and ranks them using a star system. The group says the idea is to help people focus first on the most pressing messages in their in-boxes. …

Flat-panel displays might be all the rage, but at least in some situations, Microsoft thinks the shape of things to come might be a sphere. After months of rumors, Microsoft researchers are taking the wraps off a prototype that uses an internal projection and vision system to bring a spherical computer display to life. …

Microsoft Research this week is holding its Faculty Summit, attended by hundreds of top researchers from universities and other institutions around the world. The annual confab in Redmond sets the tone and agenda for the company’s work with those researchers. …

People reading Saturday’s P-I may have noticed that Microsoft was the host of the 2008 Space Elevator Conference over the weekend. As explained by P-I reporter Tom Paulson, the three-day event was devoted to the concept of developing a system, possibly based on a carbon-nanotube ribbon, for lifting cargo and, potentially, people into space. …

At Microsoft’s CEO Summit in Redmond this morning, Bill Gates showed a prototype called TouchWall, which the company described as a vertical version of its Microsoft Surface tabletop computer. Gates gestured across the screen with his hands to browse digital files on the screen, using a companion software prototype that the company calls Plex. …

Microsoft says it didn’t pay for the use of its Photosynth technology during tonight’s episode of “CSI: New York.” It’s just a natural result of its relationship with series creator Anthony Zuiker, and of his desire to use the latest technology in his shows, the company explains. But after previewing snippets of the episode this afternoon, I can say it’s probably more valuable to Microsoft than a paid ad would be. …

It’s no secret that those futuristic demos at the Consumer Electronics Show each year don’t always turn into real, live products. But when Microsoft showed a working version of the “GroupShot” photo-editing tool at CES last year, there seemed little doubt that it would be released as promised as part of the Windows Vista Ultimate Extras program. …

Microsoft and Intel say they’re putting up a combined $20 million over the next five years to fund “parallel computing” research centers at UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. …

One of the projects drawing a big crowd at Microsoft Research TechFest event in Redmond today was LucidTouch, which lets people control a portable touch-screen device by placing their fingers on the back of the case. A camera sees where the hands are positioned and renders a shadowy image of them on the display. Here’s a video of Microsoft Research’s Patrick Baudisch showing me how it works. …